The present invention relates generally to the fields of cell biology and immunology. More particularly, it concerns methods and compositions relating to the production and use of human monoclonal antibodies to human nucleolin (NCL).
Antibodies are a class of agents known as “biologicals.” The source of antibodies can be a polyclonal supply, such as human or horse serum, or derived from a monoclonal source (single cell clone). With the technologic capability to control and select for specific antigen binding, monoclonal antibodies have yielded dramatic therapeutic benefits. However, the difficulty of generating specific antibodies for certain targets has limited the successes, and the potential for therapeutic and diagnostic agents remains largely untapped.
One impediment to the development of monoclonal antibodies for human therapy is the need to “humanize” such antibodies, which are generally made in mice, rats and rabbits. If human patients are administered such antibodies without humanized constant regions, they can suffer from “serum sickness,” meaning that an endogenous immune response is mounted by the recipient against the non-human antibody sequences. Humanizing monoclonal antibodies produced in research animals can avoid this problem. However, the cost in time and expense for humanization of antibodies can be considerable.
Nucleolin is expressed on the cell surface of human chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) cells, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells, some forms of breast carcinoma, as well as other tumors. As such, nucleolin constitutes a promising tumor antigen for targeting of therapeutics, including antibodies.